Dominic Sandbrook's 'Seasons in the Sun' offers a colourful retelling of a
bleak period in British history

On February 28 1975, a Northern Line train smashed into a bricked-up tunnel, leaving 43 people dead. For those sensitive to metaphor, the Moorgate crash seemed emblematic of a nation in decline. Britain was that rickety train: piloted by a clueless driver, headed in the wrong direction, bound for a brick wall.

Reading Dominic Sandbrook’s Seasons in the Sun is like watching that crash in slow motion. The period he covers was one of the bleakest in British history – all the misery and deprivation of wartime without war’s glory. To recount those years places impossible demands on any author’s ability to produce synonyms for gloom. Thus, the book overflows with words like ghastly, shabby, tired, dismal, drab and dreary. By the end, it’s impossible to feel nostalgic about the Seventies.

Sandbrook nevertheless has a remarkable ability to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. His subject is depressing, but the book itself is a joy. This is partly because, with the passage of time and the cooling of tempers, it’s now possible to derive macabre humour from the Wilson/Callaghan years. As anger and regret dissipate, the years 1974-79 begin to seem like a rather entertaining black comedy.

The book benefits from an exceptional cast of characters who defy credibility. If this were a novel, we’d accuse Sandbrook of clumsy characterisation. By 1975, the once adroit Harold Wilson was a tired, dispirited leader who fiddled while Britain burned. Unable to decide whether he preferred brandy or whisky, he drank both in huge quantity. He was permanently under the spell of his venomous political secretary Marcia Williams, a cross between Boadicea and Beverly Moss from Abigail’s Party. In the summer of 1974, the “Marcia problem” became so toxic that Wilson’s friends contemplated murder. She was instead elevated to the House of Lords, a more respectable but less complete solution.

Sandbrook is no lover of the Labour Party – at least not its Seventies version. His most scathing criticism is directed at Tony Benn, who comes across as a self-absorbed fantasist out of touch with the workers he claimed to represent. That seems a fair portrayal and a timely rebuttal to the admiration recently heaped on the man. Though Labour comes in for harsh criticism, Sandbrook in truth fires scorn in all political directions.

He acknowledges, for instance, that Wilson’s misfortunes had their origins in Edward Heath’s incompetence. As for Margaret Thatcher, she emerges as a duplicitous schemer whose principles were paper thin.

Sandbrook argues, quite convincingly, that Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey had found the solution to Seventies stagflation, but they were derailed by the unions during the Winter of Discontent. Seasons in the Sun is a tragic story of noble men destroyed by cowardly charlatans, of society undone by self-interest. “In true Thatcherite spirit”, writes Sandbrook, the strikers “put themselves and their families above nebulous ideas of the greater good”. (For sheer ironic perfection, that’s the best sentence in this book.) The trade unions, Thatcher’s great enemies, were in fact her best friends. As Healey bitterly reflected: “The cowardice and irresponsibility of some union leaders… guaranteed her election; it left them with no grounds for complaining about her subsequent action against them.”

Seasons in the Sun is the fourth in a series of books that started with Suez. Sandbrook is now a brand: each big book covers a small period in minute detail. The formula is heavy on anecdote and light on analysis, but the latter seems a minor fault since the anecdotes are so entertaining and edifying. As a storyteller, Sandbrook is, without doubt, superb. There is nevertheless an assembly line quality to these books; they seem manufactured rather than written. That is a pity because, at his best, Sandbrook is an engaging historian capable of impressive insight. He should, however, slow down, produce shorter books, and allow his critical faculties to flow. The best parts of this book come when he’s not trying to bombard the reader with minutiae. He’s a better writer than he allows himself to be.

When discussing politics, Sandbrook is masterful. When he delves into culture, however, his weaknesses become apparent. He seems, in truth, like a geek at a party full of trendies. In this book, he discusses punk rock because punk was important, but his heart’s clearly not in it. What passes for analysis consists in fact of recycled clichés about the Sex Pistols. Other bands hardly get mentioned. Obsessed with sales rather than merit, Sandbrook fails to explain why punk albums are still recognised as culturally important. Elsewhere, the discussion of culture is reduced to long lists of songs, plays, films or television shows, without benefit of critical comment. It’s good for triggering nostalgia, but not for inspiring deep thought.

Those are small points, however, and they are effectively camouflaged in 800 pages of engaging prose. Seasons in the Sun is a familiar story, yet seldom has it been told with such verve. We all know where the train is headed, but it’s still fun to follow its disastrous course. Rather like the mawkish song that inspired the book’s title, the late Seventies is best enjoyed as an object of ridicule. We live in tough times today, but at least the dead are buried on time and rubbish does not pile up in the streets. Middle-class socialists no longer pretend to know the Internationale. Thank goodness for small mercies.